reflective writing prompts for high school

reflective writing prompts for high school

Reflective Writing for High School Students

1. The Importance of Reflective Writing

Reflective writing encourages you to make observations about your experiences and beliefs. For instance, considering why something succeeded or failed, thinking about how or why you reacted in a certain way to an event, or pondering how your personal views affect your behavior. This type of writing is useful for helping you think about how to change and improve your actions, based on what you have learned. It can help you develop an overall understanding and perspective on a particular issue.

This type of written reflection, when included as part of a course assignment, can help students think deeply about what they are learning and reflection helps students become better learners. It encourages them to look back at what they have learned and consider its meaning and how it really helped. This type of reflection can involve a variety of different strategies. It’s not a conceptual reflection, it can be more visual or mainly focused on the learning process (called process reflective). Each can be effective in promoting learning and critical thinking. Overall, reflective writing is a significant learning activity which has a lasting impact on our students.

2. Techniques for Effective Reflective Writing

Of the many generic reflection techniques that sometimes go untaught, Gibbs’ Cycle is a good example. Gibbs’ Cycle is a 6-step process for reflection which includes description of the event, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan. Gibbs’ cycle is often simply presented to students, and they will be asked to reflect on an event using the cycle. What is usually forgotten is that Gibbs’ cycle is a model for reflection, not just a task, and like any model, it must be deeply understood. It should not be continuously used in a rigid formulaic way. The effects of using Gibbs’ Cycle, if students fully understand the technique, can lead to very deep reflective thinking over an event and a well-structured and thorough reflective piece. On the contrary, if students have a poor understanding of the technique or it is only a new introduction, the reflection will often turn out to be a mechanical recollection of an event with no real progress made in understanding, or a piece with frequent digression from the cycle and lacking structure due to misunderstanding. An alternative effect may be that students avoid using the technique where it is an optional task, assuming it to be more difficult than it is due to lack of understanding.

This is frequently not the case. Very often, students who are reasonably competent at the transactional form of writing, which Argument and Informative Writing exemplify, will struggle with reflective writing. This struggle is frequently due to the fact that students have not fully understood the technique involved and its possible effects. They may have received very little instruction on using the technique in reflective writing, and they may have had little or no practice at using the technique reflectively.

In helping students to write reflectively, there are a small number of generic approaches or techniques that are taught. At the Year 12 level, it is quite reasonable to assume that students will be familiar with these techniques and that they will have had practice in using them. It is also quite usual for a teacher to assume that because students are familiar with these techniques, they will be able to use them to good effect in their reflective writing.

3. Prompts for Reflective Writing in High School

Math What is your understanding of math today? Write about an event in your life which affected your understanding of math. How do you believe the study of math will benefit you later in life?

Science Explain your understanding of an earth, life, or physical science topic when you began the course. How has that understanding changed with the completion of the course? A friend has asked for your help in understanding a science topic from your class. Write an explanation of the topic and how you understand it. Include a personal experience.

Language Arts Do you keep a journal? Why or why not? Write about what it would take to convince you to start. Who in your life has been your biggest influence and why? What book has been meaningful to you? Why? In an essay, define a personal hero and tell who your personal hero is. Include an explanation of why they are your hero.

Social Studies How has a social studies teacher broadened your knowledge of the world? What are the benefits of learning about history? In an essay, define the concept of a global citizen and explain how it relates to the material you have learned in a social studies course. Who is your favorite world leader, and why?

4. Benefits of Reflective Writing in High School

– Building a Sense of Community: Using some reflective writing in your classroom can create a stronger sense of classroom community, as students might share some of the things that they have written with their peers. By allowing them to share some of their more personal reflections, these students are given insight into the diverse backgrounds and beliefs of their classmates. If used at the beginning or end of the year, it can also give you as a teacher information about the varied interests and experiences of your students, helping you to relate to your students and make your teaching more relevant.

– Encouraging Metacognition: The act of reflection is a great way to increase metacognition – or thinking about thinking. Metacognition is an important executive function that is under-taught in traditional curricula. By engaging in metacognition through reflection, students are able to make connections between what they knew before the new information and what has been learned, making that important connection between new and old knowledge. They are also able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their own thought processes.

Depending on the types of writing being done in your classrooms, the benefits of reflective writing may not be immediately apparent. However, this type of writing can have a tremendous impact on high school students, pushing them to think more deeply as it gives them the opportunity to express what they are thinking. Some of the benefits include:

5. Tips for Incorporating Reflective Writing into High School Curriculum

Having made the case for the unique contributions that reflective writing can make to an effective high school curriculum, and having outlined the composition possibilities of such writing in the previous chapters, I will not reiterate the importance and usefulness of reflective writing for high school students, though it would be easy to do so. Instead, I should like to close the present essay with some practical suggestions to teachers for incorporating reflective writing into the high school curriculum. Reflective writing in high school is more likely to take the form of a student’s recording what has been said or read, than a true reflection on the content of a lesson. To this end, teachers can distribute a few short, provocative questions at the end of a lecture or at the end of the week’s lectures and ask students to respond to them through writing, either on an electronic discussion board or in a journal. Deepen the value of this exercise by asking students to read over their entries after a few weeks have elapsed and selecting some for oral class discussion. While reading is the basis of a good deal of school work, students often do not see themselves as readers or as readers in a particular subject and respond to reading assignments as tasks to be gotten through rather than as something contributing to their sense of themselves and their learning. Here, the writing of students about their reading can be of great value. Teachers might ask a student to address, in writing, a series of letters to the teacher as the “journal” of a fictional character or historical figure being studied.